A little over a month ago, TLC launched in the UK. Its opening night was a nonstop lowbrow spectacle of almost orgiastic proportions. Everything was pink. Lisa Snowdon's face was all over the place. A miniature pig obliviously crawled among the wreckage. And then there were the shows, which tended to be the sort of thing that BBC3 would commission and then sneak out at 2am because it was so ashamed of itself.

I came to the end of my tether during an episode of My Strange Addiction, about a woman who compulsively licked her cat so much that a trichobezoar had formed in her stomach (polite recommendation: do not do a Google Image search for trichobezoar). That was enough for me. I was worried that watching TLC would actively make me dumber. Besides, I'd already hit my lifetime quota of reality shows where you hear a record-scratch noise every time a redneck says something unintentionally stupid. I was out.

But they pulled me back in. This is because, once you've pushed your prejudices aside, TLC is showing signs of becoming a great little channel. Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and all its sketti-based controversy might have grabbed the headlines but, at heart, TLC is the Buzzfeed of television – churning out less than essential content named so perfectly that curiosity inevitably gets the better of you. America's Worst Tattoos, for instance, is exactly what you'd expect it to be, and it's all the better for it. Then there's Swinger Wives, or Mob Wives, or Geek Love, or Extreme Couponing. Listlessly scroll through your EPG on a quiet night when your resolve is weak, and I defy you not to at least see what any of these shows actually are.

Honey Boo Boo and the Thompson clan grabbed the headlines. Photograph: George Lange

What's more, TLC chucks hour after hour of Cake Boss at the screen. As far as on-all-the-time food-based TV shows go, Cake Boss is up there with Man v Food. It's just a man from New Jersey making elaborate cakes and driving them places, but it's absurdly addictive. Not even Paul F Tompkins's bizarro future-seeing Cake Boss character can diminish the joy of seeing actual Cake Boss make, say, a 10ft Transformer cake that lights up and has moving parts. I could watch Cake Boss all day and, in my lowest moments, probably have.

But the ace in TLC's pack is Breaking Amish. Its premise is at once compelling and slightly exploitative-sounding – let's send some Amish teenagers to New York to see if they have a meltdown! – but the reality is a bit more intricate. Yes, the show has its fair share of car crashes (literally, in one case) as we see wide-eyed Amish boys get drunk and visit strip clubs, but there's a lot more going on underneath. The show explores the cast in surprising depth, delving into their homesickness and feelings of urban alienation. Many of them are repulsed by city life, but they'll be ostracised by their community if they ever return.

It will never win an Emmy but, in the world of reality TV, where Kim Kardashian can sustain an entire episode just by trying on some wigs, it's nice to see a show that can at least attempt emotional complexity from time to time.

TLC isn't perfect by any means – a lot of the British output is almost aggressively insipid, and I've yet to watch more than a few seconds of Extreme Couponing before being gripped by the sensation that I'm wasting my life – but when it hits its marks, it shows a hell of a lot of promise. Really, though, don't search for trichobezoar. I can't state that firmly enough.